Tag Archives: scheduling

Often in my classes, I’m asked for a clear comparison between the various traditional roles and the new roles in Scrum. Here is a high level summary of some of the key responsibilities and activities that help highlight some important differences between these four roles:

ScrumMaster

Product Owner

Project Manager

Team Lead

NEVER

NEVER

Assign Tasks

YES

NO

PARTICIPATES

Create Schedule

NO

NO

YES

Manage Budget

NO

Remove Obstacles

PARTICIPATES

YES

YES

NO

Define Business Requirements

PARTICIPATES

NO

NO

YES (Deliveries)

Define Milestones

NO

Facilitate Meetings

NO

YES

YES

YES (process and people)

YES (business)

Risk Management

PARTICIPATES

Organizational Change Agent

NO

NO

NO

NO

Accountable for Business Results

RARELY (just costs)

NO

Of course, there are many other ways we could compare these four roles. What would you like me to add to this list? Add a comment with a question or a suggestion and I will update the table appropriately!

Affiliated Promotions:

Try our automated online Scrum coach: Scrum Insight - free scores and basic advice, upgrade to get in-depth insight for your team. It takes between 8 and 11 minutes for each team member to fill in the survey, and your results are available immediately. Try it in your next retrospective.

If you are in an environment that is struggling to get stakeholders to your review, ask yourself if you have chosen an impossible day of the week for this ceremony.

Please, for the sake of your team(s)….

When considering when your Sprint will end,
think of the ability of your stakeholders
to actually show up once in a while!

Stakeholders are people too. They don’t want to let the team down either.

(Emphasis added.)

Mike has great experience working with Scrum teams and I hope you read through his other articles as well.

Affiliated Promotions:

Try our automated online Scrum coach: Scrum Insight - free scores and basic advice, upgrade to get in-depth insight for your team. It takes between 8 and 11 minutes for each team member to fill in the survey, and your results are available immediately. Try it in your next retrospective.